Projects against Women Trafficking

little more for IOM than a justification to fight autonomous migration

18.Aug.02 - Women-, children-, and human trafficking - no one can deny that scrupulous businessmen force women, who are willing to migrate, into prostitution with false promises. Women’s organisations and anti-racist initiatives often support the victims of such violations. In some cases, IOM might also be involved in, or rather financing, projects in support of victims or conducting prevention work. However, the bigger picture tells us that the IOM exploits the theme of women trafficking in a simplified manner, and uses it as a justification for fighting migration as a whole. This seen by the fact that only 0.16 per cent of all of IOM’s travel arrangements are in support of victims of trafficking, but also by the way in which the IOM explains the phenomenon of human trafficking as well as the ‘solutions’ it suggests: According to the IOM’s publications, women are always simply poor victims, traffickers on the other hand, are without exception always evil and criminal human traders, and both these circumstances can be fought only through a rigorous fight against illegal migration. The fact that many women in Eastern Europe, Asia, Africa and South America, in the light of existing conditions and circumstances, take a conscious decision to take part in migration through arranged marriage, domestic labour schemes and also through prostitution, is ignored by the IOM. They also remain silent about the fact that numerous people, in flight or in migration, take conscious decisions to put themselves in the hands of commercial traffickers, because they have no other chance of entering the ‘Fortress’ of Europe. And what’s more, the IOM spin doctors know why they keep quiet about these facts. They themselves take an active part in destroying refugees’ and migrants’ flight routes, as, for example, in Turkey or the Ukraine. So the IOM’s engagement against women trafficking turns out to be a clever tactic aimed amongst other things to whip up public sentiments against all forms of uncontrolled migration.